Karma

It started with KARMA—grafittied onto the industrial garage door as if it didn’t mean anything. I approached it now, on the same bicycle that had brought me to it countless times that summer of seven years ago. The day was hot and windy, and the seven year span hadn’t been kind to my fitness, but I had made the decision to ride all the same. It wouldn’t have been the same otherwise.

The scene greeted my eyes in the same manner it always had, aside from the tree that had begun growing through the cement beside the door. There it was, KARMA just as bold as when I had left it. I looked over; the same lock that I had placed there still guarded it. I shook my head in regret. The same tool which I had originally thought would protect everything may have cordoned me, and everyone else, off from what lay inside.

I did not approach it right away, in fear that I would not remember the number sequence, and in thoughts of that first time I had come here.

That had occurred almost two weeks after the day I had returned home from college. That first day back had been just as hot, but without the wind. It had left the air as dead as the city. I had ridden through its streets with the same curiosity that slows traffic at the sight of a car wreck. The financial crisis had hit the town harder than it had Ann Arbor. It didn’t help that we were a one industry community. Nobody had thought that the need for cement would ever diminish, and the Department of Commerce had taken a laissez faire policy on diversifying.

Of course I hadn’t realized all this at the time; I had been studying English at the University of Michigan. Our neighbors didn’t realize it either—they were busy putting in their forty hours at the quarry, then sitting out on their porch watching life go by. They never thought that the plant would go bankrupt, that it would close down 90% of its operations and lay off three quarters of its workers. I had graduated in 2010, enough time for the unemployed to pack up and leave town, and by the time I got back, despite the stories I had already heard, I was shocked by what I saw.

It seemed as if the whole town was boarded up. The parks were abandoned. For Sale signs were still scavenging the streets for any possible charity. The activity that I had once known so well had been uprooted and left out in the heat to shrivel. I learned soon afterwards that all of my high school friends had moved out—moved on. The plans that I had had to reacquaint myself with the life I had once had were sucked out of me.

Mourning lasted thirteen days. During this span, I had stayed inside. I had not had the heart to see what I had seen upon returning home. It only magnified the feelings of lostness that I already felt upon graduating without further plans. It had never been like that before. It was me and the town, stuck in stagnancy together. We couldn’t bear to face each other for the disgust at seeing our own reflection in the other.

It was on that thirteenth day, however, that I finally decided to get on the bike and view the dying monster that had caused all of this. I felt like I needed to pay some spiteful dues. There was, almost all the way around it, a chain link fence with plastic sheaths to visibly separate the work from the world. There were two exceptions to this; one was at the main entrance. I rode past that and spurned at the freshly mowed grass and annual-filled planters. It was mockery to both the displaced persons and the town. The other exception was the back entrance, which was no more than a forgotten chain link gate with a chain running through it. There were no plastic dividers, here, however, which would give me a perfect view of the pit and the processing plant beside it.

The gate was at a dead end street off the main road, one in which I had made a u-turn once but nothing more. Right next to the gate stood a row of industrial garage units that may or may not have belonged to the quarry. Regardless, they were free to the street. It was this row that contained that graffitied sign. I remember it catching my attention, slowly drawing me away from the quarry. KARMA—an uncanny thing to tag on a random door. I doubted it was the name of a gang. It tightened its grip on me, and I found myself letting my bike fall and approaching the door which, unlike the others, did not have a padlock on it.

I mimicked my actions now, though this time, the trepidation came from the doubt whether I could remember the combo. I didn’t know what I would do if I couldn’t. Get some bolt cutters most likely. Three numbers flashed in my mind, however, and I tried them out.

The lock clicked, a surge of excitement and horror pulsed through my veins, and I pulled up the door. Light flooded the expanse and exposed the contents within. I let out a breath. Everything was just as it had been. The smell—exactly the same, as if welcoming me back in a haunting rush.

What had I been expecting to find when I first pulled up that door all those years ago? A few barrels of paint thinner? Pallets of peat gravel? At least something industrial. The sight that came to me instead was nothing of the kind. The place was filled to the door. There was only a narrow corridor on the far right end that allowed its subjects to enter. It was all stuff. Domestic stuff. Magical stuff. It looked like a collector’s basement study rather than an industrial storage unit.

I had been sucked into it. The door had closed behind me—though I’m sure I had done it, I do not remember doing so. Luckily the electricity had not been shut off, and the solitary light bulb on the ceiling cast a dim glow on my surroundings. It was a jungle. Paperbacks, newspapers, and magazines weighed down the end tables. More books, knick knacks, and vases with long dried blossoms filled a bookshelf. The walls toted gold records and posters and held up a leaning easel. Another table in the corner had multi-colored rocks of all shapes and textures strewn about it. There was a couch. A small tube TV sitting down on the ground with an extension cord popping out the back completed the scene.

Despite feeling like I shouldn’t be rummaging around in another’s stuff, I couldn’t help myself. I felt like there was some sort of meaning to all of this, and that meaning had magnetized the air which flowed through me in waves and made my heart beat just a bit faster. Why all this? Why here? It seemed as if I had stepped through a portal into a world that wasn’t supposed to exist.

I eventually left, wondering if I had trespassed, yet I heard the unit calling me again the next day, and I had no choice but to answer. It wanted to be visited. The dust told me that the other, or others, had been delinquent for some time. Subsequent visits ensued, and observations and discoveries were made each time. I couldn’t help but notice the themes and names of some of the wall decorations. On one part of the wall, there were John Wayne posters, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan records. Another part of the wall hosted a Thriller poster. Both classics and comics riddled the end tables. A tub of jacks and marbles sat within feet of a shoebox filled with Super Nintendo games and gear. The rocks had nothing to do with anything. Neither did the stamp collection or small game hides that I later found tucked in a back corner box.

It started coming together once I began looking through some of the notebooks. The one that struck me most, and remained with me even until this day was the journal of Edwin Tate. The journal was dated 1970. Newspaper clippings of Vietnam had been pasted all over it. The commentary he had added had filled me in on the reason for his obsession. I know that my number will be called. It is an inevitable feeling in me. I can feel the Bad Moon Rising. I’m not going to make it out alive. Canada is sounding tempting right now.

The reason this caught me was that everybody in town knew the fate of Colonel Edwin Tate. He had been both right and wrong in his assumptions. He had not fled to Canada when he was called up. Less than a year later, the newspapers were flying about the lives he had saved for his efforts. Above and beyond the call of duty. That’s how he had been introduced when he came to our elementary school to give an assembly. As far as I knew, he was still serving in the military, conducting operations in the Middle East.

Edwin’s private thoughts were not the only ones I discovered. Though not as memorable, I noted the presence of at least three other boys, all from different times. They exposed themselves to me, their fears of going off to college, their hesitance to take over the family hardware store, their trepidation of asking Jane Wilkens out. None of them had revealed their names like Edwin had, but I could picture them just as distinctly.

As I walked in, all the memories of my time spent, and my subsequent initiation here swept over me. I sat down on the couch, the same couch that she and I had spent all that time watching recorded episodes of The Adventures of Rodney Jones.

My parents did not accept a recent college graduate to simply move back into their house and attach himself to a couch cushion. “You now have more education than I do,” my father had told me. “You will be paying a hundred dollars a month of rent.”

“I’m broke, Dad; I spent all my money on tuition and room and board.”

“Well, you’d better find a job quickly then.”

“There are no jobs out there, unless you want to sell insurance. Course, there’s no one out there with the money to buy it anyway.”

“Well, you can work for me, then, in the mean time.”

My dad owned a small sandwich shop which had remained surprisingly profitable throughout the entire mess. He ran a tight ship with his employees, while gracing his customers with a friendly charm. His only competitor was the Subway on the other side of town near the freeway entrance, and they always messed up people’s orders and didn’t have as good a reputation for their bread. Plus, they didn’t have one dollar ice cream cones, which, to an impoverished and struggling town, was a godsend.

So I had donned the olive green apron that I had effectively avoided for twenty-three years by excuse of education, and went to work my first job out of college making sandwiches. I dreaded the sound of my phone alarm hitting five-fifteen, and told myself, only nine and a half more hours. Each day, I would ride my bike the eight blocks to work and lock myself into the same routine for the next several hours.

Returning to a small town can be a thorn in the side, continuously twisting and reawakening alarm in the nerves. Almost all the people who came in to the café knew me, and whether it was busy or dead, would initiate the same conversation:

Mark, so good to see you back. Just visiting?

No, I’m back.

Oh, for how long?

[Shrug] Not sure.

So, your parents tell me that you’re all graduated now. What’s next?

This was where I didn’t have much of an answer. This was where, in response, they would proceed to prescribe my future for me:

You would make a great lawyer; have you considered law school?

My brother is hiring for his landscaping business; your parents tell me you loved doing that in college.

There are plenty of opportunities to teach English overseas.

There’s always the Air Force.

I was always hoping you would use those great math skills of yours.

Everybody but one seemed to know what was best for me. All the while, I would be doing the same robotic assembly that I had mastered on the first day. It made me certain of one thing I didn’t want to do with my life.

I was always relieved when there was a customer I didn’t know. Communion was kept simple. They ordered a ham and Swiss on rye, I made sure to ask them whether they wanted horseradish or not. They wanted two scoops of spumoni ice cream, I asked whether in a cup, cone, or waffle cone. Our relationship was purely transactional—no judgment, no pity, no disappointment. If they wondered what a 23 year old was doing in a café, they didn’t voice it, and I didn’t care.

I can’t quite remember when she started coming in—perhaps about the time I discovered Edwin’s journal—but she was the exception to them all. It took me a moment to recognize her—she had been two grades younger than me and we had hardly if ever talked in high school. Even so, she had since dyed her hair black, gotten a few tattoos on her neck, and changed her eye color to green. That first time she came in, and I connected the name to the face, I did a sort of sheepish smile at my circumstance. She smiled back, but it wasn’t the same smile I had gotten from the other acquaintances. Rather, it seemed to say, it is really good to see you. I’m glad I’m not the only one here anymore. I had a feeling like she had felt like a kid stranded in a sea of recessed adults, and that I was just as much a relief to her as she came to be to me.

We hung out for the first time after she had come in to the café for the third straight day. It was really nothing more than kicking pebbles down the dirty roads, but it was everything to me. While it was evident that we had led two different lives for the past few years, it was also evident that we got along much better than we ever could have hoped. We talked of little, and laughed hard at it. We never had such a grand time doing nothing before.

And it took me away from myself. With no one to talk to but my parents, and knowing that every time I did, they were whispering to each other in their unspoken language about my lack of future, I was constantly caught in my own self loathing. Being stripped of all that I felt made me a man took its toll on me. College had offered me intellectual stimulation, Delta Psi Sigma, and numerous ladies’ hearts to break. It had given me a chance to show that a 20 hours a week job managing the auto parts department at Walmart could fully support all my needs and part of my tuition. I had none of it now, and each passing hour reminded me of that.

For these reasons, she had been a boon to my life. After that first day, we had exchanged numbers, and she had texted me that night. The overload of emoticons told me that I was not alone in the way I felt about our time spent together. We decided to hang out again.

It took only another week and a half before I was willing to open the garage to her. She was surprised to see it. Shocked to see that I had been so bold as to keep coming back. “It’s like a sort of cave of wonders,” she had said.

“Arabian Nights,” I had responded. “I’m surprised you know the reference.”

“I was thinking Aladdin.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“So have you contributed to this wealth of treasure?” she had asked after I explained what it all was.

I had, actually. It had begun only a few days before. I had told my parents that I was going camping, after which I brought a sleeping bag over to the garage. It had been a refreshing escape, and as I closed the door, threw it down, and plopped onto the couch, I had felt safe for the first time since returning home. I left it there the next morning when I returned to my parents’ house for breakfast, in case it needed to happen again.

They were not exactly treasures, but what they offered was the most precious thing I could have hoped for at the time. Since then, I had begun bringing in a few other things. One was a mini-fridge, another was a fan, since it could get rather stuffy, and the third was a trash bag full of popcorn that my younger brother’s old girlfriend gave me when I saw her working at the movie theater.

“Those aren’t treasures,” she had told me.

“They’re what I want though. Besides, there’s enough here to entertain me well enough.”

I showed her some of the old comics. She pretended to be interested. Mostly, I found her staring at me.

“I never would have thought that you would have been the one I’d be hanging out with after all these years,” she had said to me at one point when we were both sitting on the couch and she had draped her legs over my lap.

“What do you mean?” I said, though I felt like I entirely understood her.

“Back from high school. I knew who you were—the lanky Mormon kid who was always smiling, who everybody liked but wasn’t sure what to make of him because he seemed too perfect.”

I had laughed. “I was lucky enough to have a way of life that kept me out of trouble.”

“So what does he think now, when he finds himself with a girl who dyes her hair and has a closer relationship with her tattoo artist than her mom?”

“I think that he feels just fine with it, that that girl has been the one person keeping him going these past few weeks.”

She had been impressed by my answer.

“Besides, I think that the hair and tattoos are a bit misleading, that people make too rash a judgment on somebody’s unique expression.”

“Hmm, sounds scripted,” she was smiling though, and I knew that she appreciated hearing that.

The garage ended up hosting our mutual company more and more as time went on that summer. We ended up watching all the video recordings of The Adventures of Rodney Jones. The antiquity of it, though often cheesy, was also endearing, and it meant even more to know that it had made the cut of some former kid’s treasures. I often felt ghosts of their presence in our midst, and again was comforted by them. Every time the Rodney Jones theme kicked off another episode, I could feel a jolt in my spirit, as if a spark of connection took me back to the late seventies when the show had aired. There we sat: her, me, and the boy, getting sucked into another one of Rodney Jones’ troubles.

It was after about a month that we bought a lock. I don’t know what motivated us to do it—we had never vocally mentioned it before—to do so would have been absurd. We had found the place without a lock, it almost seemed part of its identity—like a monument, intended to be open to the public. However, when we were wandering around the hardware store—I still don’t remember why—we saw the lock, she looked at me, I agreed, and we picked it up.

I suppose something had changed in our perception of it. Perhaps I simply cared too much for the stuff that I had brought in. “Can’t let anyone take your cream sodas,” she had said as we had clamped it on the door. It had made a harsh sound as it clamped shut, and it made me shudder a bit, despite my support for the action. Perhaps it had to do more with my relationship with her. We vowed that we would be the only ones to know the combo. It was a sort of initiation to a new level in our burgeoning relationship, which was being built of more and more experiences.

The weather had been particularly hot one summer night that we attended the garage. We popped in a tape of Rodney Jones that we had already seen twice, but since we were both so exhausted from the heat of the day, we didn’t much care. This was added by the episode of the week before, where we had gone on a night hike into the park to see if we could see the meteor shower. We had lain on the grass, and had suddenly lost interest in the stars altogether. I think it was she who had initiated it, but I certainly didn’t blame her. Although I stopped our progression at making out, the damage was done—the scar was implanted. She had become irresistible to me.

In any case, we were just looking for an excuse to be close to each other, and were both surprised to find that we were not embarrassed or uncomfortable enough to avoid contact with each other’s sticky skin. I put my arm around her; she draped her legs over me, we leaned in to each other and didn’t really watch much of the tape.

At some point, I had fallen asleep. Spooning with her on the couch had been too comfortable. She, too, had been lulled into rest. She was still caught in this state when I jolted up. From the light of the snowy fuzz blaring from the tube, I checked my watch, rubbed my eyes and rechecked it when it read 4:12AM. My throat and gut connected. She, awakened by my sudden alarm, turned to me, smiled, and sleepily said, “What’s wrong?”

I squeezed out from behind her, slipped on my sandals, and headed for the door. “I—I gotta go.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I just gotta go.”

Later that morning, at the time when she usually came into the café, I felt my pocket vibrate—four times for a call, once for a missed call, and once, moments later, for a voicemail. I checked it on break:

"Mark, sorry I couldn’t come in to spare you from work today. Something came up. Call me after you get off and we can go cause some shenanigans together. Luv ya, Bye.”

Everything in the message was token except for the tone in her voice. It was a little tight. I had a feeling it had to do with the abrupt and strange way that I had left her last night.

She seemed her usual self when we got together later that afternoon. We walked down the bright gravel of the recreational trail. All was silent in the heat other than the conversation of buzzing between the cicadas and the power lines beside us. Occasionally, my shoe scraped the gravel, interrupting them, and I tried to take better care of my steps.

“So why’d you leave so suddenly last night?” The question was sharp, but her smile blunted it, along with the gaze of those green eyes. Although I knew the color was fabricated, they were just as arresting, and it made me almost wonder the answer to her question myself.

“It was late. I didn’t realize I had fallen asleep.”

“It was early. You would have been up in an hour anyway.”

I had nothing to say to that except for a pitiful comment about how I had to get changed into my work uniform.

“Maybe you should make them one of your treasures so we don’t have to run into this again.”

Her smile faded when I didn’t share her humor. She looked at me a second, and a different sort of smile formed on her face. “What’s bothering you, Mark?”

I had started a few times before stating. “We shouldn’t have fallen asleep like that.”

The words made absolutely no sense to her. She stared at me blankly, and the cicadas regained control of the air.

“I just didn’t feel comfortable with it,” I went on to explain.

“You seemed pretty comfortable to me. We were tired.” She said it with a shrug, leaving me wondering how much I had hurt her. Then, at my further silence said with a laugh. “It’s not like we had sex or anything. I don’t know what you’re being all weird about.”

“I just, I can’t do that. I know you don’t understand, but—”

“No, I understand. Your religion and all. Whatever. That’s okay.”

I checked her to try to get her meaning. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she said as if I were an idiot. “It’s okay. I knew what you were. I guess you’ve learned more about me now.”

She was pleased to find that I still wanted to hang out with her. Our tensions mutually eased as we grew to understand that our different life views weren’t worth a friendship. That situation, however, wasn’t the only time the subject of my unique identity came up. They were always quick comments, said with a warm smile. I could tell that she never meant them as an insult, nor was she consciously attempting to play the role of Delilah. At times, however, I sure felt it, especially when she was staring me down, especially when it was especially warm, and she was wearing her bootie shorts and tie-dyed wife beaters. “Why do you subject yourself to that?” she would ask. “What difference does it really make?” “How can you be so certain?”

I looked back on that time with her as a castaway looking out on the sea. She was dangerous to me—not really to anybody else—but to me, it was playing with fire. The thing that kept me from running away and calling the authorities to put it out was the fact that the rogue sparks only flew every once in a while. Most of the time, we were just friends. Most of the time, we were engaged in something as innocent as playing Super Mario Brothers together. That smile would direct itself toward me, and it was a bit mesmerizing, but only enough to keep things warm between us. She would test my limits only occasionally, and when I resisted, she would retreat back again, and that would be it. She simply did not understand.

I thought about writing all this down, just as Edwin Tate and the others had done. I thought about writing down my feelings on my present state of life, of the café, of the town and concrete plant, of her. I never got around to it though. At first I told myself that I really didn’t want her reading it. I knew, however, that wasn’t the case. We had more or less talked about all of those anyway. Looking back on it, I knew more along the lines of what it was. I didn’t feel worthy to add my words to theirs. I felt like I had betrayed them. And every time I clicked that lock on that door and stared at the word KARMA, the jabs of hypocrisy penetrated my soul. Even so, I continued clicking that lock. It gave me a sense of security that I was not willing to give up.

That summer, now seven years past, turned my gut as I sat there on the couch, staring at the blank screen. I considered seeing if the thing still worked, of popping in one of the tapes in the VCR or firing up the Super Nintendo. Just for old times’ sake. A quick evaluation of myself denied the urge, though. I didn’t want it. I had gained far too much in the last seven years to wish to digress even for a moment.

The fever that that summer was in here was broken by a call from my Uncle Rock up in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. He was the head of the historical society up there and offered me an internship with him. That internship turned into a job, and eventually I found myself in charge of all the lighthouses in Door County. While up there, I met my future wife, Beth, who had been working as a nurse up in the hospital there. She fell in love with both me and my faith, and a little over a year after joining me at church, we were married. I went on to get my Master’s Degree in Public Policy, and currently found myself working for the city of Green Bay. It was a satisfying enough career, and with my wife and little son Emerson, I was happy.

As for my summer friend. I have no idea what happened to her after a few months into my internship. I called her a few times when I was first in Wisconsin, and looked forward to seeing her during Christmas, but she ended up going to see her dad down in Florida while I was back. A few months more and we had dropped all contact. There was no falling out, no argument, simply a few slowly dying embers, which were stirred to orange with those last few phone calls. Last I heard she was still here though. For all I knew, she was still somewhere unseen in the summer haze before me.

My wife did not want to come with me when I told her I wanted to see if I could get into the old garage. “I’ll stay here with Emerson and help your mom with the dinner. You go make your peace with it.” I wasn’t surprised by her rejection. I had told her enough about the place.

The more I looked around and paid attention to my feelings, the more I realized that they hadn’t changed. I felt like my perception of them was a bit clearer now though. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but the place felt like a trap, a live trap with a couch and a TV to keep one from believing in his reality of confinement. That’s what it was to me, at least. I’m sure that to Edwin Tate and the others it was different. I had been right back then. I didn’t belong with them.

I looked up at the rafters, where the sleeping bag had been stored the very last time I had been here, seven years ago. I drifted between the decisions of leaving it there and taking it away. I felt like it didn’t belong, but it seemed to require too much will to reach up, pull it down, and cast it out. Same with the mini fridge. I laughed solemnly when I found a solitary cream soda in there, sitting dustless as if I had put it in yesterday. I decided to leave that there. It was the only thing I decided was worthy to stay there. The other stuff I decided would be returned to my parents. I would come back for them after returning and bringing the car.

I laid the articles outside the door, confident that they would be undisturbed for the next twenty minutes, and if not, that whatever bum picked them up would make better use out of them than my parents. Alas, twenty minutes later and no bums had taken advantage, and I loaded the things in the car. I then turned to the lock hanging on the door. I stared at it as well as at KARMA, knowing that I had to make a decision. In those few months in which we had used it, turning those numbers so often we could nearly do it without looking, it had come to exercise great power over me. I had been fine with that then, but I was not so sure now. I thought back on the feelings I had had in sitting down on the couch, of thinking back on Edwin, of even thinking back on every time that click sounded and assured us of our supremacy over the place. The thing suddenly felt like a tyrant, one which I now had the strength to dethrone. Without thinking about it anymore, I took the thing off and chucked it as hard as I could over the locked chain link gate and into the limestone abyss below.

I then drove away, hoping the next time I came to town, the thing would be gone. Such was an immature thought, however, born of selfish desires for a closure that a stronger spirit than I didn’t need. Hopefully the next time I would be strong enough to stay away from it on my own. Hopefully, all those that I had kept out of the place for all these years would find it, or reacquaint themselves with it. Hopefully, Colonel Tate would come back, make a stop, and find that his stuff was all where it used to be, and that it would give him some respite from his worldly cares for awhile.

And there was still space in there. I had done an ill job in filling it. Hopefully there was someone who could do a better job. The town was on the rebound, the park was filling back up with the noise of children’s yells and laughter. Though I didn’t know them personally, I had a feeling like at least one of them needed it and would discover and use it. I felt good in knowing that they now could. Perhaps that was why, when I returned and Beth asked me how it was, I found myself replying, “Just fine.”

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